A workshop review by Ron Vachon
Saturday, Karen Butts presented a workshop about print competition, a topic she knows well. It was aptly named Color Me Meritorious. Karen is a master of color harmony and has numerous PPA degrees, including CPP, Craftsman and Master Photographer, and has won several awards for print competition which is evident by all the bling on her ribbon… see photodigitl.
We met at her home\studio where Karen showed us several albums of her work and PPA Loan and Showcase books which also contained her images. She also has several of her beautiful images on display on the walls around her house which display her love for her family and as well as samples of the types of products her customers can purchase. Show what you want to sell!
During the presentation she discussed the 12 elements of print competition and she showed images that exemplified those particular elements. She also showed images which merited and those which didn’t merit and she explained why those images didn’t merit; maybe it was because of light coming from the wrong direction, posing errors or technical errors. This was very valuable because it trained our eyes to see errors in our own images.
We went upstairs to her studio which is filled with props she used for her baby photography business. Karen made most of the props herself by knitting wraps and scarves and crafting headbands for the little ones.
We discussed color harmony and did an exercise with scraps of fabric she had on hand. We each picked a few scraps to see how the colors worked together. She gave us the tip not to use analogous colors in our logos because the colors are too close to each other. Logos should use different colors so the text will stand out from the background color. There were several other nuggets along the way.
We did another exercise where we used our own images and built presentation mats for them. She taught the technique of how to make a digital mat template in Photoshop with 2-3 layers and a layer mask which can be resized to fit the dimensions of the chosen image. This is a very versatile method to make a mat because the maker can adjust the size of the layer mask opening to accentuate the composition of the image.
We wrapped up the day by evaluating our own images as if we were judges. We had to give our feedback before Karen or the others provided additional critique. I found this exercise very valuable. Thank you Karen for a great workshop!
